Richard Obert, The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, covering high school football, high school basketball, and other high school sports in Arizona. I love the story that goes well beyond the stat line.

Scott Brown squeezed in a state basketball title into his Special Olympics full-time job

Scott Brown’s 40-hour-a-week job involved working with Special Olympics in high schools all over the state.

He managed to squeeze in a state championship.

Last Saturday, Glendale Joy Christian followed what the football team did in the fall and captured the school’s first boys basketball state title, taking the Division IV crown with a hard-fought, 74-63 win over Phoenix Arizona Lutheran Academy at Tim’s Toyota Center in Prescott Valley.

Brown wasn’t planning on taking over the program last spring.

But his son Treyson, a sophomore on the junior varsity team, kept begging the former school administrator to take it.

It had been 15 years since he last led a high school basketball team, at Cottonwood Mingus in 1998. His last taste of a title game came in ’95 in a wild, two-point loss against Paradise Valley.

Since then, Brown was athletic director at Phoenix North Canyon and oversaw the entire athletics department in the Paradise Valley Unified School District.

He retired from his district AD post two years ago and came back to where he began his coaching career in the late 1970s, working with Special Olympics athletes.

Now he coordinates programs in the high schools by day, and leads Joy Christian’s over-achieving basketball players by night.

“When I left in ’98, I felt I had it made,” Brown said. “The kids I worked with, I didn’t feel I’d ever duplicate that. My wife and I came to Phoenix to try the administrative side. It was something I’d enjoy doing. I’d been there, done that, and had no desire to get back into coaching.

Brown just wanted to be a dad, and watch his son’s JV games this year.

He prayed about it, and his 40-hour work week turned into 60 this year, with kids buying into the team concept. Nobody scored more than 12 points a game. The leading scorer was the sixth man, junior swingman Josiah Stefanski.

Brown helped 7-foot senior Jeremiah April become a defensive force who jump-started the offense in the stae championship game with two electrifying dunks.

It became a tight-net family and the team went on a roll after losing to Phoenix Cortez, the second game it played that day in the final of a tournament in Wickenburg.

Joy Christian closed the season on a 19-game winning streak and finished with the state’s best record (33-2).

“It’s a great group of kids,” Brown said. “It’s the spirit of that little school that is so cool.”

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